Monthly Archives: March 2016

Last week in class, we discussed the democratizing aspects of digitally born archives. In relation to conventional archival formats (i.e. museums and libraries), the digital, user-generated archive provides a realm where marginal voices are offered the opportunity to speak on an equal front. It is believed that a diverse assortment of personal narratives can be heard in the digital archive. However, as I slogged my way through the bewildering array of xenophobic and ridiculously patriotic documents in the 9/11 Digital Archive, I couldn’t help but question whether this collection of “individual” narratives were really all that different from one another. Could it be that the website’s platform enabled the homogeneity seen in the archive’s records?

Joanne Garde-Hansen addresses a similar concern in her article “MyMemories?: Personal Digital Archive Fever and Facebook”. In her analysis of Facebook in relation to the idea of ‘consignation’ in Derrida’s Archive Fever, Garde-Hansen argues that only superficially are social media platforms sites where “powerful and immediate versions of the self emerge and interconnect with others” (139). Garde-Hansen takes note of Facebook’s uniformity and how user profiles signal social norms as newcomers replicated their friends’ profiles in an effort to “fit-in with the existing digital collective” (139). With a structure in place, users must consign to tell their stories and record their memories in not only a formulaic way (as designed by the team at Facebook), but also in relation to how other users have conveyed their personal narratives.

Over the years, Facebook has evolved into a multifaceted platform where a user’s identity is not only created and preserved, but now actively remember (sometimes without consent). Since Garde-Hansen wrote her article in 2009, Facebook has undergone significant changes and ‘improvements’. Some of its newest features, “On this Day” or “A Year in Review“, allow users to remember their biggest moments on Facebook.

This morning as I logged on to my account, a post I had written “on this day” four years ago was displayed at the head my News Feed. Oddly enough, on March 28, 2012 I had posted a status announcing my acceptance to UBC. What an appropriate memory to recall now that I’m finishing up my degree! Although I’ve shared other posts on this day over the years, Facebook has chosen to remind me of this particular event based on what I can only assume is the number of ‘friends’ who’ve “liked” or commented on the status.

What this ultimately implies is that my memories (and whether or not I choose to recall them) are presented to me and attributed a value based on their relation to other Facebook users. With this new feature in place, I am forced to remember certain memories over others – not for how I value them, but for how others do. My memories on Facebook are tied to how they were evaluated by my ‘friends’. An user’s memory has gone from a subjective experience to a collective experience on Facebook. As a website founded on the ideals of inter-connectivity and friendship, Facebook’s default platform does not allow individual users to choose how they construct, archive, and more recently remember themselves. Since I am the only one who can see these memories when they appear on my newsfeed (unless I decide to ‘share’ them), why should they be displayed based on how others have rate them? Based on its fundamental nature, Facebook is not a truly ‘personal’ archive. One user’s personal narrative, identity, and memory will always and indefinitely be understood in relation to another’s.

Works Cited:

Garde-Hansen, Joanne. “MyMemories? Personal Digital Archival Fever and Facebook.” Save As…Digital Memories. Ed. Joanne Garde-Hansen, Andrew Hoskins, and Anna Reading. London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009. 135-50.

In my introductory post to this blog, I included an epigraph from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four:

“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present, controls the past.”

I thought I would briefly recall Orwell’s statement, seeing as though it is especially relevant for this week’s focus on archives within former colonial societies. As Bastian reminds us of the old cliché, “history is written by the winners” and recorded in the archive (Bastian 267). Documents in the colonial archive celebrate the exploits and conquest of the colonizers, meaning the settlers’ history takes precedence over the largely undocumented history of the natives. However, with the recent rise of post-colonial studies, scholars are endeavouring to uncover the silenced histories of First Nations communities within the colonial archive. Strategic readings of these past imperial texts were intended to unearth a new counter narrative to the archive’s more conspicuously European history. Similar to Orwell’s statement, scholars today are readjusting our understanding of the colonial past in a way that accounts for the very real histories of an entire group of people who’ve been both canonically and culturally ostracized.

Jeanette Allis Bastian and Krisztina Laszlo, two scholars of colonial or post-colonial societies, are actively searching for these silences for two reasons:

1. As a way to correct injustices, vindicate the oppressed, and demystify the “winners” (Bastian 269).
2. For preservation of culture; a type of anthropological salvation of a “dying culture” (Laszlo 300).

After my encounter with the archives and readings this week, I, like Bastian, am skeptical that a true and accurate account of these “subaltern” histories can derive from a colonial archive. Further, I’m unsure as to whether the museum archive is an appropriate place to “preserve” and “vindicate” these marginalized cultures. Within a conventionally established archive backed by federal institutions, these narratives are invariably and inescapably tied to a position of “otherness”.

Take for instance the Beverly Brown fonds, located at UBC’s Museum of Anthropology. Ostensibly, Beverly Brown’s photographs offer an example of a marginalized voice under colonial power that has made its way into the museum’s archive. The collection is mainly comprised of photographs documenting Brown’s experience studying at St. Michael’s Residential School in Alert Bay, BC. From roughly 1937 t0 1945, Brown photographed her friends, classmates, teachers, and the surrounding landscape. At first glance, the images are aesthetically beautiful and evident of true photographic artistry. However, when bearing in mind that the photographer who captured these moments was also a student within the residential system, one realizes the advantageous position Brown was in to portray both colonial and native experiences simultaneously.

First of all, I was struck by how happy the subjects of these photographs appeared to be. The dominant counter-narrative in circulation highlights rather the injustices, horrific conditions, and abuse the children at St. Michael’s were subjected to (Here is an article that recounts one resident’s horrific experience at the school one year after Brown had left).

However, in the Beverly Brown fonds, the children were photographed dressing up, playing games, and enjoying the outdoors. The narrative these images convey deeply complicates our general understanding of the abusive context in which these photographs were taken. Without dismissing the very abusive circumstances of these residential schools, I merely want to point out the potential difference in narrative being conveyed when looking at images of the residents photographed by white settlers, versus images captured by natives themselves. In opposition to the traditional photograph of unhappy students sitting in their desks or in a strict formation before a church, Brown’s more youthful, candid scenes of children playing outdoors challenge the colonial archives’ account of First Nations communities as victims, as the conquered and assimilated. In the Beverly Brown fonds, the children most often appear resilient, steadfast, and hopeful, standing stoically before a totem pole.

The image above is a perfect example of the two colonial narratives existing simultaneously. Here we have a residential school (a marker of colonial power), bordered by two Kwakiutl totem poles, were a group of First Nations students are marching across the front lawn.

Despite these photographs being taken by and of students in this residential school, I continually find myself wondering how much “vindication” are we actually offering these marginalized narratives if they are always understood as “other” or “counter” to the colonial narrative? The indigenous narratives documented in these archives will always be tied to the Western, colonial perspective that has enabled and called for their appraisal. While their place within the museum archival context may serve to legitimize and vocalize these previously repressed narratives, they are always understood in opposition to the colonial narrative, never fully equal. My question remains, how fully can these repressed narratives be heard in the archives of traditionally marginalized figures (such as Beverly Brown) within a colonial institution (i.e. university museum)?

Works Cited:

Bastian, Jeannette Allis. “Reading Colonial Records through an Archival Lens: The Provenance of Place, Space and Creation.” Archival Science 6.3 (2006;2007;): 267-84. Web.

Laszlo, Krisztina. “Ethnographic Archival Records and Cultural Property.” Archivaria.61 (2006): 299. Web.